Today's agenda

I've already gone out on the bike trail this morning at 4:30am and returned before 6:30am doing 20 miles.  Since I had 2 flat tires in 2 days on the front tire I've been leery every time I start riding after stopping at like a stop light or a stop sign because it just feels like I have a flat tire.  Then I get off the bike to check and it's still hard from all the air pressure inside of it.

I'm still exhausted from all that work I did yesterday at the rental house next door.  I still have to do the bathroom, the bath tub, sink and toilet, the floor is already mopped.  Then I have to rake up all the leaves and dog poop that the last tenants were nice enough to leave me to clean up.  I think 3 large piles that he raked up but never actually shoveled up and thrown out.  What a nice guy right?  So now I gotta do his dirty work.  That's it!  No more pets allowed.

Michael Jackson's memorial service at the Staples center will be broadcast live from 9am to 1pm on almost every channel today and Chip wants me to record it for him from CNN.  He wanted me to record it from E! but I was going through the guide on the cable but E! doesn't show it being live until tonight so there's something wrong there lol.  They say 10am PST but it shows the Michael Jackson True Hollywood Story being played over and over.  I think CNN will do just fine.  Although it would suck if they had breaking news during the event.

"We interrupt the memorial of Michael Jackson to bring you this report.  Casey Anthony demanding that she get some water, can you believe this?  She actually wants some water... How dare she!"  .... 30 minutes later "Back to you Staples Center."

Yeah that would suck lol.

So at about 6pm tonight is the new show Warehouse 13 on SyFy channel.  Yes I said 6pm.  I have SyFyHD which is eastern time zone so I get to watch it as the east coast does.

My day is pretty much set already.  UGH!  I have to go fold laundry before I go next door lol.

We The People Stimulus Package

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeYscnFpEyA

Busy All Day

Wow I've just been busy all day long without 1 moment to catch my breath.  First off I woke up late.  I didn't set the right time on my alarm for some reason.  The alarm clock has 2 alarm settings so if your spouse or whatever has to wake up at a earlier or later time then you can have them both set differently and both turned on.  Well, I have them both set for different times and the one that I needed wasn't turned on lol.  I guess I just forgot to turn it on the right one.

So I woke up on my own at 5:30am and went out, Dell DJ battery was almost dead so naturally I had to charge that up.  6:30am comes and I leave the house.  I'm on my way home and my brand spanking new tube for the front tire blows.  UGH!  I'm like 5 minutes away from the house (not walking, by bike) so I have to pull over and put some air in the tube, just enough to get me home.  I come home and feel the tire and it's goin' down hehe.

I get in the shower immediately and then walk over to Albertsons to buy a bike repair kit.  My bike repair kit sucks, the patches aren't patching lol so I needed a new one, one with that glue.  But Albertsons doesn't have them so I go to Walgreen's and get it.  Of course I had to go back to Albertsons anyway for other things.

I come home, put the new patch on the tube and I take one of my old tubes that the patch didn't work for and I just cut it all the way around and since it has that green goop stuff (which doesn't work by the way lol) I have to wash all that out, throw away all the chunks and then get it all off by hand in a bucket of water.  So then I wrapped that around my tube, the one that I just bought yesterday that already has a hole in it that I just patched up lol.  So hopefully this patch will keep it patched and if I run over another sticker then that extra tube in there will take the impact of it and not let it go through to the new tube.

So now it's 11:45am, I'm going to drink my slim fast shake but then I have to go next door and clean the rental.  We were going to do it over the weekend but Chip was just too exhausted to go over there.  He slept the entire weekend lol.

Hopefully it won't take me too long, I'm going to bring my alarm clock and set it for 2:50pm so that I can come over here and watch Stargate SG-1 at 3pm.  If I still have more to do then of course I'll go back but I don't think there is too much to clean.

LATE!

ARGH!  I woke up and it's 5:30am because I set the wrong alarm.  My alarm clock has 2 alarms on it and I set the wrong one lol.  I didn't even wake up from the alarm, I just woke up.  I looked at the cable box to see what time it was and I was like OMG!  I'm LATE!

Then I go to fill my camelbak with ice and water and I think hmmm, I wonder.  So I turn on my Dell DJ Mp3 player and the battery is dead lol.  Great!  Perfect!  Well, it had 0 bars but it wasn't dead dead.  I could listen to the radio on it but I prefer music.

So Since I'm already late I might as well wait until it's charged up a little bit more.  I'll leave the house at 6:30am which is about the same time I usually come home from riding the bike.  According to the weather channel app on my computer, 6am will be 70, 7am will be 71 and 8am will be 73.  Since I won't be coming home until 8:30am I might as well mention that 9am will be 76 so between 8am and 9am the temp will go up by only 2 degrees so I'm not concerned about the heat catching up to me.  That's the only reason I ride so early, to beat the heat.

Oh well, it finally gives me a chance to fully wake up before actually starting my day.  Or... does this mean that everything else this morning is going to go wrong and I should just stay home?  LOL

Me in the Simpsons - Wood Burned/Painted

I got bored...  LOL I went to the google search engine and typed "turn picture into simpsons character" and I found this website from Burger King called Simpsonize Me.  I thought it was a very good likeness of me lol and I got bored so I wood burned it and that wasn't enough for me, I had to paint it too lol.  So here you go, I hope you like it.

Is Bakersfield a safe place to ride a bicycle?

Is Bakersfield a safe place to ride a bicycle?

This article was in today's Bakersfield Californian newspaper.

In my opinion it is only safe to ride a bicycle if you are a defensive rider.  If you are watching where you are going, looking both left and right, never crossing the street unless you have the green light (or in some cases walk signal).  Never riding on the wrong side of the road then crossing while a car is turning left (which happened to me).

This one time I was leaving the bike path and I was crossing the street and this pickup truck was pulling out in front of me while he was looking right at me.  He nearly ran me over.  This was about 10am in the morning too so it's not like he was drinking and driving... that I know of at least.

I have a little mirror that is attached to my helmet and I'm constantly looking at it to see the traffic behind me so I know what is coming at me.

Now I cannot say that it is 100% safe to ride as early as I do because even at 4:30am there are probably still some drunk drivers out there but usually when I ride that early there are maybe 1 or 2 cars every 10 minutes so it's pretty safe where and when I ride.

You also have to consider the fact that I'm not riding in the busy streets along with traffic.  I start out in a neighborhood and I'm pretty much only in neighborhoods until I get to the bike path so there is not that much danger of getting hit.  And I know a route that gets me to the mall and to Target where it's through neighborhoods and I never have to drive with traffic.

So is Bakersfield a safe place to ride a bicycle?  I think it is during the morning or during the daytime IF you aren't driving in traffic where there are no bike paths or where cars are parked right in the bike path.  If you try to ride through neighborhoods then you are safe.  But if you drive alongside cars then there is never a guarantee that you are ever safe.  Even if you are crossing the street you aren't ever safe because there are always reports of people getting killed while crossing the street.  Is it safe for me to ride here?  Yes, because I am a defensive rider and I pick the best safest routes.

If you live in a city that you aren't sure where the safest routes are, why not just go to your favorite map website, I go to google maps and I map out my route then I adjust the route so I am going through neighborhoods then I print it out and hold it while riding through that neighborhood so I learn it so the next time I have to go that way I will remember.  And if I don't remember then I print it out again (if I threw the old map out that is).